MLB Notebook: End-of-season Red Sox and AL, NL awards; startling (good and bad) TV numbers

When the Baseball Writers Association of America reveals its award winners in November, they will invite comparison to the postseason which will get underway this week: they'll not include the Red Sox.

If you've been watching, you know the obvious -- there is precious little to celebrate about the 2020 Red Sox season. The team stumbled out of the game and then endured a nine-game losing streak in mid-August that sealed its fate. From that point on, they became irrelevant.

Still, tradition dictates that we wrap things up by selecting the best performances of a pandemic-shortened year that was forgettable in nearly every way.

The envelope please:

Red Sox MVP: Alex Verdugo
While it could certainly be argued that no one was very valuable for a team with the second-worst record in the league, Verdugo's first season in Boston deserves some recognition. He proved to be a well-above-average defender in both outfield spots, an aggressive and determined baserunner and an effective leadoff hitter.

He hit lefties, and, as all good lefthanded hitters must do to thrive at Fenway, learned to utilize The Wall to his benefit. He brought energy every day, and in a year in which hope seemed to take a vacation, provided a glimmer of good will for the franchise's future.

Red Sox Pitcher of the Year: Nathan Eovaldi
It would be a stretch to suggest that things would have turned out far differently had Eovaldi not missed a little more than three weeks with a calf muscle pull. By the time he went down in the third week of August, the team's fate had already been determined. In fact, it could be fairly said the Sox' chances to contend were wiped out when the rotation lost both Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez before the season even began.

Eovaldi's numbers (4-2, 3.72) will not gain him entrance into the Cy Young Award race. But Eovaldi consistently managed to do what so many others in the rotation couldn't: give the Red Sox a chance to win. The fact that the Sox won two-thirds of Eovaldi's starts (six of nine) suggests he might be the team's second most valuable player.

Rookie of the Year: Bobby Dalbec
When the Red Sox traded popular first baseman Mitch Moreland at the deadline, it opened the way for Dalbec to begin his major league career. Few could have predicted the immediate impact he would have.

Dalbec homered in his second at-bat, and a week later, homered in six consecutive games. He enters the final game of the season with eight homers in 22 games, and pace that over a full season would translate to.....Nah. Never mind. There's work to be done with his approach and the strikeouts need to be scaled back. But over the second half of September, Dalbec made some necessary adjustments and produced more consistent at-bats. More than anything, Dalbec represents a reason to look forward to 2021 and beyond.

Biggest disappointment: J.D. Martinez
Since he talked about it incessantly, the Red Sox should dearly hope that Martinez's mysterious downturn was solely the result of not being able to review in-game video. Because otherwise, the possible explanations for a player experiencing a better than 200 point dip in OPS are far more troubling -- especially for a player who is due almost $39 million over the next two years.

Biggest surprise: Tanner Houck
It's important to keep in mind some context. Keep repeating to yourself, "It was just three starts....it was just three starts.'' But, boy, what a three starts it was. And against quality competition, too. As exciting as Houck's brief debut was (0.53, 0.882 WHIP, 4.8 K-to-BB ratio), the best part of Houck's introduction to the big leagues is the fact that the organization can, indeed, develop pitching.



AL MVP: Jose Abreu. Consistent, durable and a beast of a run producer. He averaged an RBI per game.
AL CY YOUNG AWARD: Shane Bieber. How good was Bieber? He had a lower ERA (1.63) than Pedro Martinez did in his magical 2000 season (1.74). That's how good.
AL ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Kyle Lewis. Lewis led rookies in virtually every offensive category, making him a slam dunk choice.
AL MANAGER OF THE YEAR: Since this is the award for which I'm voting this year, I won't reveal my choice for now.

NL MVP: Freddie Freeman. In the 2020 season, there's something pretty poetic about a guy who rebounded from COVID-19 in July to become the best player in the league.
NL CY YOUNG AWARD: Trevor Bauer. Looks like Bauer, a free agent in a month, picked a pretty good season to have his best year.
NL ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Devin Williams. The Brewers reliever goes into the final day of the season with a 0.33 ERA and is one strikeout shy of averaging exactly two strikeouts per inning. Any more questions?
NL MANAGER OF THE YEAR: Don Mattingly. A week into the season, the Marlins were decimated by a COVID-outbreak. Yet somehow, they qualified for the postseason for the first time in 17 years.

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A few items from TV Land, with numbers at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to baseball and its appeal as a TV property:

1. Even without attendance as a traditional measuring stick, it's patently obvious that the Red Sox have suffered a massive drop in popularity locally. Because all of the seats are necessarily empty for every game, we can't measure no-shows or lack of interest at the gate.

But TV ratings provide a window into interest in the team, and they should send a chill through Fenway Park and the offices of NESN in Watertown.

It seems obvious that, thanks to the team's miserable performance on the field, coupled with increased competition for TV viewers (a long playoff run by the Celtics, the start of the Patriots season, the Bruins' postseason run) would result in a significant dip in TV viewership. That was already a given.

And yet, even with lowered expectations, the numbers, revealed by Nielsen, are shocking.

In the second-to-last week of the regular season, the Red Sox mostly earned ratings in the 1's -- that is, on average, a little more than one percent of the TV households in the Boston market were tuned into a particular Red Sox telecast.

For most September weeknight telecasts -- some with competition from the Celtics and the NFL and some without -- the Sox drew ratings of anywhere from an 0.8 to a 1.9.

And when they went head-to-head with the Patriots -- as they did on the afternoon of Sept. 13, the date of the Pats' regular season opener -- the results were predictably lopsided, with the Patriots earning a 29.2 rating.

When the pandemic-delayed season began in late July, there was interest -- or at least curiosity -- surrounding the Red Sox' return. Their July 24 opener against the Baltimore Orioles attracted a 7.8 rating.

That number, according to some local TV executives, corresponded with what the Sox often attract for a regular season telecast, though even those numbers were off from the double-digit ratings the Sox claimed during the height of their popularity from 2003-2008.

But the numbers steadily declined from the opener. As recently as, say, early August, the team drew a 3.8 number on Aug. 9. But soon came the club's nine-game losing streak which saw them drop out of contention in the division and further lose whatever relevancy they had.

Undoubtedly, some viewers will return when the Red Sox put a more compelling product on the field. But it's unclear how soon that will be. And even when that day comes, it's obvious the days of the Red Sox dominating TV ratings for most of the summer, are, for now, a thing of the past.

2. Major League Baseball worked out a highly lucrative extension with Turner Sports (TBS), valued at $3.5 billion over the next seven years.

For $500 million annually, TBS will televise one wild card game, two Division Series and League Championship Series. They'll also introduce a Tuesday Game of the Week telecast during the regular season.

But the real value here, of course, is the postseason. At a time when baseball's obituary as a TV property is being written regularly, this is a sharp increase from the current deal -- which runs through 2021 -- that pays MLB $350 million annually for essentially the same package.

It's a reminder that in an age in which ratings are down across the board for virtually every TV property -- thanks to a splintered audience, streaming options and cord-cutting -- live sports remains very much a valuable commodity to the networks.

And it also puts the lie to the notion, expressed by owners like Tom Ricketts of the Cubs and Cardinals owner William DeWitt Jr., that the industry isn't really profitable.

Here we are, with the economy in a downturn, and a worldwide pandemic, and yet Major League Baseball has signed two TV renewals that have included significant increases -- one with FOX for the Game of the Week, All-Star Game, an LCS and the World Series, and now one with Turner.

MLB has one more rights deal -- the one with ESPN -- to negotiate. It could well be that MLB is waiting to see if it will have additional playoff inventory (via a permanently expanded postseason format) to sell off. Either way, expect that ESPN (or another entity) will pay a similarly hefty right fees increase for a spot at the table.

Figure that both these deals get a mention or two during the upcoming negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement, which expires just as these new TV deal kicks in.

Oddly, the Red Sox' sorry numbers and the big increases for the national package fly in the face of conventional wisdom: that MLB in 2020 has far more appeal as a regional property than it does on the crowded national TV sports landscape.